​​The application process is now open for the next cohort. of the Poetry Business Writing School, an 18-month course run by the inimitable Peter and Ann Sansom. If you have a bit of publication track record and are looking for well-informed peer support, inspiration, provocation, biscuits and a good laugh, don't hesitate to apply. You'll meet cracking poets from all over the country and make new friends and connections. And, finally, if that doesn't convince you, you get to work with Peter and Ann, two of the most generous, knowledgeable and entertaining teachers you could hope to meet.

As well as making a start on the final editing for my new pamphlet, due out in the spring, my November will be mostly editing and redrafting from the proto-poems started at last month's 5-day residential outside Whitby and poems workshopped with Richard Price's group at the Poetry School and with Mimi Khalvati's seminar group. Sometimes I suspect that I attend too many workshopping groups, especially if I make the mistake of double-workshopping a poem. But, just as much as the feedback I receive when it's my turn, it's invaluable practice to spend time closely reading other people's poems to see how they work (and sometimes why they don't) and what other poets are writing about. It can seem that I'm the only one not addressing big issues - ecology, heartbreak, cyber-bullying, things like that - and I do worry about it from time to time but someone has to write about draught-excluder, the social anxiety caused by plumbers and, of course, jam.

I'm very happy to have a love poem to apples in Second Place Rosette, a new anthology from Emma Press about British customs and traditions, launching this month. I'll also be reading a poem about my mother's work in the rag trade from the Grey Hen anthology, Songs for the Unsung, at the Poetry Cafe and have two poems in their new anthology about vegetables, out this month, Vaster than Empires​.